POLITICAL EMANATIONS AT THE ROLLINS HOME

The political gods had their fun back in November,
when no one knew Michele Rollins was going to be a
Republican congressional candidate, including Rollins
herself.

It seems there can be foreshadowing in politics, not
just in the minds of professors of literature, and
Rollins was prime to get caught up in it.

Rollins and Pete du Pont, the Republican governor
from 1977 to 1981, were hosting a fund-raiser shortly
before Thanksgiving at Rollins' Chateau Country home for
Colin Bonini, the state senator running for treasurer.

People were in a good mood. The holiday season was
approaching, they were in select company, the speeches
would be short and the drinks tall.

The speakers arranged themselves at one end of a
large room, crowded with 150 people. They would hear
from Rollins, du Pont, Bonini, Mike Castle, the
congressman who announced the month before he would run
for the Senate, and Charlie Copeland, the du Pont family
member who gave up a state Senate seat for a losing
campaign for lieutenant governor in 2008.

The event prompted du Pont to remember another time
at the Rollins estate. It was one of the most memorable
in Delaware history. The political Furies were really
running wild then.

Richard Nixon was the president. Cale Boggs was an
aging senator. This was 1971.

Boggs, who also had been a congressman and governor,
wanted to retire when his Senate term was up the next
year, but it would set up a bruising primary between du
Pont, then the congressman, and Hal Haskell, the
ex-mayor of Wilmington, very bad for the state
Republican Party.

The Rollins estate was the site for a disarmament
summit to bring in Nixon to sort the situation out. John
Rollins, the business titan and Republican financier,
was a friend of Nixon's and the lieutenant governor with
Boggs in the 1950s. Nixon arrived by presidential
helicopter, bringing du Pont along for the ride, as well
as Bill Roth, the state's other Republican senator, and
Bob Dole, the Republican senator from Kansas.

Nixon talked Boggs into running again. As the
Republicans wanted, there would be no primary.

The Republicans should have been careful what they
wished for. It set off a chain of events. Boggs lost the
election, and the nervy New Castle County Democratic
councilman who beat him is the vice president of the
United States today.

It is not the Republicans' favorite memory. When du
Pont had his turn to speak at Bonini's fund-raiser, he
cheerily noted he once flew to the Rollins grounds from
Washington aboard Nixon's presidential helicopter and
let it go at that.

"What the purpose was, I've long since forgotten," du
Pont quipped.

If the 1972 Republican statewide ticket could be
shaped at the Rollins house, maybe the 2010 ticket
could, too.

People looked at the lineup of speakers and wondered
merrily if there could be a congressional candidate to
go along with Castle and Bonini. Sure there could, but
not the one who was the subject of the speculation.

It was premature excogitation to think Charlie
Copeland would run.

At this point Michele Rollins had no plans for it
herself. She expected to spend the election season
encouraging others to campaign, only coming to the
conclusion last month that it looked as though the
Republicans were giving away Castle's congressional seat
to John Carney, the former Democratic lieutenant
governor, and maybe she ought to think about it.

"I had intended to make a major effort to get people
to be candidates, not by being a candidate myself,"
Rollins said.

Strangely enough, Rollins actually was mentioned as a
congressional candidate that evening at her house. It
materialized in a conversation involving Priscilla
Rakestraw, the Republican national committeewoman.

Rollins had thoughts about running in an internal
party election for the seat on the Republican National
Committee herself someday, but Rakestraw has been there
since Gerald Ford was president and shows no sign of
relinquishing it. This was the context of the
conversation.

"I think Michele should run for Congress," Rakestraw
teased.

"You want me to run for everything except what I want
to run for," Rollins cracked.

There it was. Somebody said Congress. When
people talk at the Rollins home, the political gods are
listening and laughing.